Cobalt is the new oil. Car companies and battery manufacturers are all rushing to secure multiyear contracts with mining companies for their lithium-ion batteries. According to a Bloomberg report, Apple is also participating in this game as the company wants to secure its long-term supplies. Read More

Even as headsets based on the Snapdragon 835 reference design — like Lenovo’s positionally tracked Daydream headset — are just gearing up for their stateside release, we’re already looking to what the future of VR that isn’t tethered to something else looks like. Today, Qualcomm showed off a reference design centered around its latest mobile chipset, the… Read More

Just a quick bit of news for those with Nest cams around the house: a new, cheaper Nest Aware plan is on the way. Nest has long offered two plans: a $10/month plan that lets you store the last 10 days of video history, and a $30/month plan that gives you 30 days of video history. This new plan will cost $5 per month and, yes, will give you five days of video history. Read More

After Google announced earlier this month that it was going to wrap Nest back into Google’s hardware operation, everyone figured we’d see a bit more overlap between the two. Sure enough, just two weeks later: the Nest Cam IQ Indoor is getting support for Google Assistant. Read More

Google and other tech giants often have huge recruiting efforts that can target students — but startups might not have those kinds of resources to find or grab them before they head off to those huge companies. The biggest tech companies in the world can offer a lot of resources and bigger compensation packages, but startups may still offer a huge opportunity, too. Read More

With the trend of growing cybercrime showing no indication of abating, a startup called Vectra that has built an artificial intelligence-based system called Cognito to detect cyberattacks and mobilise security systems to respond to them has raised $36 million to expand its R&D and business development.
This Series D comes on the back of a strong year for the startup, with 181 percent growth… Read More

Snapchat has posted an official response to users who signed a petition on Change.org asking the company to reverse its controversial update, which people say makes the app more difficult to use. In the response, Snapchat promises to make a few more changes to the Friends and Discover section in order to address user complaints.
These changes were announced yesterday, along with GIF stickers… Read More

With the NFL season now over, players finally have time to focus on their passions and side projects, which can be anything from an externship on Capital Hill to angel investing in startups. Some of these activities are facilitated through the NFL Player’s Association, which actually runs a tech accelerator designed to trade player licensing rights for equity. Read More

Netflix’s original programming is some of the best content out there, but an upcoming reality special called The Push looks bizarre at best and disturbing at worst.
The company just released a trailer detailing the premise of the show, which you can watch below.
According to host Derren Brown, a mentalist and illusionist (who, in the words of his website, has become “synonymous… Read More

Dish-owned streaming TV service Sling TV now has 2.21 million subscribers at the end of the fourth quarter, the company announced this morning. This is the first time that Dish has broken out its Sling TV subscribers separately from its larger pay TV subscriber base, and confirms earlier estimates that Sling TV had grown to north of 2 million users. Read More

4me, a startup that helps companies organize and track their IT outsourcing projects, announced a $1.65 million seed investment led by Storm Ventures. The company, which launched in 2010, would seem to be a bit long in the tooth to warrant a seed investment round, but the founders had successful exits from previous startups and were able to self-fund the company all these years. Read More

Last year, when tech-company database Crunchbase (once a part of TechCrunch but since spun out) announced a funding round of $18 million, it previewed plans for a new marketplace where it would sell access to third-party data to supplement its own information. Now nearly one year later, it’s taking the wraps off that project. Read More

Alexa-controlled toilets are a thing in 2018, but cost thousands. An enterprising person can make their own by following these instructions. It takes a bit of work, multiple components and about $750 (plus the cost of the toilet), but the end result is a voice-controlled toilet — and everyone needs that in their life. Read More

Mabl, a startup that’s coming out of stealth today, uses machine learning to make functional testing for developers as easy as possible. Mabl users don’t have to write extensive (and often brittle) tests by hand. Instead, they show the application the workflow they want to test and the service performs those tests — and even automatically adapts to small user interface changes. Read More

After months of searching, Shapeways announced today the appointment of Gregory Kress as CEO of the 3D printing marketplace. Kress, the former president and COO of online learning service Open Education, becomes the New York-based company’s second chief officer, replacing co-founder Peter Weijmarshausen, who stepped down in August to pursue other opportunities. Read More

Zagster, the bike-share company behind the Pace brand, has raised a $15 million round led by Edison Capital Partners. The startup has also unveiled its new bike parking system for both shared and personal bikes. Read More

While the cloud removes much of the hassle and complexity associated with maintaining and managing an application, that ease of use means you can lose control of your usage and spending just as easily. Intello wants to help your company track and manage all that information in a dashboard. Today, it announced $1.3 million in seed funding. Read More